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Ottawa firm on decision to admit Syrian 25,000 refugees

Security will not be compromised during the resettlement process, spokesman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship ministry says.

Rona Ambrose, leader of the Opposition, said Saturday it's appropriate to ask whether 25,000 Syrian refugees can be screened to enter Canada by year's end in a secure way. (Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The terrorist attacks that rocked Paris on Friday night shouldn’t shake the Canadian government’s resolve to take in thousands of refugees from Syria, experts say, even though one of the attackers may have entered Europe using a Syrian passport.

According to Reuters, a Syrian travel document was found near a gunman outside the Stade de France after a co-ordinated assault that left at least 129 people dead and 352 wounded. The agency reported that someone used the passport to enter Greece on Oct. 3 with a group of refugees, but it’s not clear if it legitimately belonged to the gunman. The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Despite those reports, the new Liberal government said Saturday it will stand firm on its election pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees. Asked whether the government still intends to meet that target by the end of the year, as promised during the campaign, Jean-Bruno Villeneuve, a spokesman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship told the Star in an email: “The government has reiterated its commitment to resettling 25,000 Syrian refugees and more details will be released in the coming days.”

Villeneuve stressed that security would not be compromised during the resettlement process. “Effective security and health screening has always been central to our planning around Syrian refugees,” he wrote.

In a news conference at the House of Commons Saturday afternoon, Opposition leader Rona Ambrose said Canadians were right to be concerned about taking in thousands of people from a hotbed of extremist activity over a short time frame. Ambrose didn’t go so far as to call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to abandon the plan, however.

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“The goal of supporting refugees from the region of Iraq and Syria is a very important goal for all Canadians. We are very compassionate people,” said Ambrose, the interim Conservative leader. “But Canadians are asking the question — can we do it this quickly, in a secure way? And I think that’s an appropriate question.”

According to Peter Showler, who chaired the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada from 1999 to 2002, it would be a mistake to see the Paris attacks as evidence that refugees pose a security threat to Canadians. He said the situation in Europe is “drastically different” from the process by which refugees are brought to Canada.

More than 814,000 migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other war-torn countries have reached Europe by sea this year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Thousands of them have crossed multiple borders as they head north to countries like Germany in what Showler described as “a massive, disorganized rush of people.”

“There are virtually no security reviews on them as they’re moving through Europe,” he said.

But under Canada’s overseas resettlement program, Showler said, refugee claimants must first undergo a “thorough risk assessment” by the UNHCR before the agency refers them to the Canadian government. Canadian officials then administer a visa interview and run the claimants through a security check before they’re allowed to settle here.

Although the Liberal government hasn’t announced whether it would follow this process to meet its target, Showler said it would certainly be possible to screen 25,000 refugees before the end of the year. The process could be done safely, he said, by selecting only those claimants who are obviously low risk, like women and children, relatives of Syrians already in Canada and people who fled the country during the early period of the war, when Bashar Assad’s government was cracking down on democratic activists.

“These are people that are completely antithetical to a Sunni extremist who’s been involved with violence,” Showler said. He noted, however, that security checks are only one element of the resettlement process and it might be a bigger challenge to find housing and other supports for 25,000 refugees in fewer than seven weeks.

Faisal Alazem, a spokesman for the Syrian Canadian Council, suggested it would be a cruel irony if Canada became less welcoming to Syrian refugees as a result of the Paris attack. He pointed out that the migrants are fleeing violent groups like the Islamic State.

“The Syrian refugees are victims of these people,” he said. “This is the kind of terrorism that (Syrians) have been living every single day, every single second, for the last four years and a half.”

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